


Somewhere Different Now

by monanotlisa



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, F/M, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 05, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-01
Updated: 2010-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 19:52:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/152851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monanotlisa/pseuds/monanotlisa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>"And here I thought </i>tempting fate<i> was basically your job description."</i></p><p>[Set after 5x05 "Flesh and Stone"]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somewhere Different Now

"This is --"

"Not Leadworth, that's for sure." Amy lets the _sh_ sound pop, which is theoretically, linguistically impossible, but there you go; that's Amy Pond for you.

"No," he says, enunciating clearly just in case anything, anything in this particular world should hinge upon his words. "This seems to be a different place entirely."

With the TARDIS behind them on the hilltop, a whole new world is spread out in front of them.

Well, new in relative terms, pertaining to locations he hasn't visited. Otherwise, he could liken their landing site to Leadworth if he tried -- for one, there are trees and grassy meadows; for two, there do not seem to be any people around; for three, he vaguely wishes he were back in the TARDIS -- but he would not like her to talk badly about Gallifrey either, to put down trees shining with leaves of silver and a sky burning bright-orange after dusk.

Much as he cannot imagine anyone ever wanting to do so.

"I guess while we're on this planet, we could have a look around?" Amy offers, wide eyes and that cheeky lower lip; he should really know better and tell her no, _no this is not a good idea, not a good location at all_. "Oy, is that a village?"

It is, and it isn't; rather, it's a collection of houses in the middle of rolling hills and a forest: stone and wood and everything dull, not a single polished surface in sight, such as a lake or even a pond, no pun intended. What he would give for a river, a brook, a rivulet even. The air around them is thick with mist, and it's hard to tell whether they just came at an inopportune time in autumn or this unknown rock of a planet simply lacks any and all appeal.

One step behind Amy, he walks down the slight slope of the hill into what can only be the village square. Village oval, although come to think of it, it seems more egg-shaped --

"If that's a village, where are its inhabitants?" Amy frowns.

Well, that's very simple, too simple perhaps for human minds, who at various times and in various cultures seem to have lost the ability to stand still and watch, listen. Smell.

"Smoke!"

Amy eyes him, her mouth quirking. "Turning to old proverbs fancied by village gossips, Doctor?" Already, she's turning around herself, sniffing visibly and audibly too. "Maybe a long-lost colony of Americans are having a barbecue behind the village shed?"

"Grilling may seem like a typical habit but is, I assure you, nothing unique to the inhabitants of that particular political experiment, or even your planet -- why, just think of the bird-people on the third moon of Naheiyok..." He has to stop, briefly, to follow her -- follow Amy loping towards the large rectangular building at the north end of the oval: solid, thatched roof, possibly a granary.

He ambles after her, the pungent aroma wafting on wet currents stronger with each step. A slow hum starts filling the air, not quite even but rising in pitch before dropping again.

Amy comes to a halt in front of a green door, shabby as everything else around, and looks back over her shoulder. "The barbecue has to be somewhere here, and now there's even a sound --"

Louder all of a sudden because the green door opens: chanting, definitely chanting. Alto and basso and are these children's voices as well, oddly muffled?

The skin on the back of his neck prickles, cliché as that may be, when a figure emerges in the doorframe: brown cape, brown boots, and oh, look, is this a clay mask the person is wearing? More importantly, what's the person carrying?

Amy draws back, towards him, "Doctor, that's a pitchfork."

"Yes, well, I'm sure there's a perfectly good, farmwork-related reason for this kind person to be equipped like this." His fingers are curling around the sonic screwdriver, though, just in case -- just in case anything needs to be opened. Besides this can of worms, that is.

And maybe there is a good reason for one person, only that more of them are filing out of the barn building, their voices still in near-perfect harmony, each of them in the same attire, each of them holding in their hands pitchforks, rakes, and hatchets. Tiny droplets of mist catch on the sharp metal edges and points, making them the only things bright and gleaming, after all. Their mouths are hidden -- of course, the masks soften the sound, transforming it into the low hum reverberating around them -- but the eyes behind the masks are keen.

Like him, Amy is inching backwards. "I think I've seen this movie," she says, voice low. "It didn't end well for the red-headed woman."

He nods thoughtfully. "Popular culture often gets things wrong, but I'm pretty certain we shouldn't tempt fate."

Almost a dozen masked figures in brown are lined up in front of them now, chanting louder now, their make-shift weapons raised.

A brief, not quite panicked snort from Amy. "And here I thought tempting fate was basically your job description."

Backwards, backwards.

"No, no; if that were true, I would tell them things like, Take Me To Your Leader!"

"Not sure after being taken to him, we could easily un-take ourselves again, Doctor."

"But, Pond, I can always barter for my freedom by offering you --"

The chanting stops.

In fact, everything does: pain explodes in the back of his skull, and the force of the blow from behind is the last thing he registers.

He wakes on a pile of rotten leaves by the side of the village square-that's-not, the world spinning. When he touches the back of his head, the spot is tender and slick. Warm too. He looks at his red-stained fingertips.

 _Amy_. Where's Amy?

She's gone; the cloaked villagers are too. This can't be good; this can't be good at all in any alternative, and he needs to find Amy, find her right now and immediately.

The smoke-smell is still there. He can follow it. Back to the granary, around it to the field behind: harvested, emptied but for the centre of it where there's a quadrangular pyre blazing into the night sky, a huddle of cloaked villagers around it, still -- again? -- chanting, but this time around, it's almost drowned out by the crackle and roar of the fire.

On top of the pyre, tied to a St. Andrew's cross, a slack figure wearing a bright red jumper. Engulfed in flames. The only thing not yet covered in fire are a pair of dark blue sneakers with white shoestrings at the feet.

As the chant rises, so do the flames. They are a wall of fire now, obscuring everything. He stumbles forward -- why is he stumbling; it makes no sense because the ground is a little rough, it being a field and all, but it's not that uneven -- closer and closer, to rescue her, to retrieve her at least.

But before he's close enough, the chant ends, and so does the fire: from one double-heartbeat to the next, there is no pyre any more, only a pile of ashes.

The Doctor closes his eyes and opens his mouth. Maybe it's her name ( _Amelia Pond_ ), or maybe these people couldn't bear hearing a Gallifreyan lament, but when he opens them again, throat sore, the villagers are gone, having left only footprints in the muddy earth, scattered far and wide over the field.

He wonders if he can tell Amy in the taste of ashes in his mouth.

A loud clang makes him turn his head. A side-door of the granary opens, and --

Amy appears in the frame with hair still the colour of fire but her body otherwise resembling the tint of this particular world. She's wearing no shoes, is dressed in wait, wait, what _is_ this, a sack-cloth?

She raises a single eyebrow at him and drops something small and metallic before kicking the door shut behind her with a naked heel.

He doesn't remember running, but he's at her side before he knows it, or possibly just afterwards, and it's only the fact her hands are so hot in his that he realises she's here, she's with him, she's --

"Doctor," she says, and it's a half-laugh, the kind that sometimes masks tears in its stead, her eyes bright and staring straight into his, "it's fine; I made it out without anything remotely sonic, and why are you making that face?"

Face, face; that's a good start, right there, and he has to touch hers just to make sure she's real -- that Amy Pond is alive and well and with him, not an illusion, not a ghost or one of the walking _simulacra_ on Raailizi. Her skin is warm under his fingertips, warm and soft, no tear-tracks or soot on her cheeks or anything that would betray a fiery fate, although of course this is her, Amy: the girl who waited and didn't cry but did bite.

"Hey," Amy whispers, her hands curling around his, pulling them to her chest, just above where her one heart beats fast; as ever she seems far stronger than they should be, given her size and relative human strength, "hey, you're all -- I've never seen you like this before."

She's never seen him like any other of a hundred, a million this-es either, but her tone of voice is so gentle, gentler than he in turn has ever heard from her, and perhaps that's his undoing. Or perhaps it's the way she closes her eyes and leans forward to kiss his forehead, which is a gesture of reverence on 597,342 planets including Earth and Gallifrey but feels less like a benediction and more like a burn, searing his skin and making him pull back and look at her.

Look at her.

He knows she knows, now; he can feel the low thrum between them. No drums, he thinks dimly, but dooming him nevertheless. Her fingers stroke up his right arm, reach up to cup his cheek, and very clearly physics have lost all their power at this point because they feel perfect, pleasant, like thirty-five degrees body temperature. "Relax, Doctor."

Easier said than done, especially as her lips are anything but relaxing, sliding gently across his, making him follow her motion, follow her; when she opens her mouth, it's too late to change course. It's not always like this (it hasn't been like this in quite some time) and of course it shouldn't be, but she kisses him fiercely and sweetly at once, and his shiver has nothing to do with species-related misaligned body temperatures.

This isn't what he is; it isn't what he does. But sometimes, it's what he wants. Whom he wants.

"Amy. I thought --"

 _I'd lost you; you were gone_. But the truth is, he didn't think all that much; his reactions had shockingly little to do with rationality. "There was an -- I thought I'd come upon a sacrificial harvest bonfire."

"You thought they'd taken _me_?" Her voice is low, her accent rolling over him (waves on a cliff; clouds against a storm-sky). "They didn't; clothes only - what, did burning in effigy not go out of style here yet?"

"Not funny, Amelia Pond, not funny at all."

She looks at him, eyes thoughtful, and nods. "Let's go."

Even before her two syllables have been processed properly in his brain, she laces her fingers with his, drags him back to the TARDIS, into safety and warmth and colour.

Where Amy turns around, gripping the lapels of his jacket hard, pushing him less so against the TARDIS door from the inside. The back of his head hits the door, _ah, ouch_ and he lets out an involuntary sound, making her still. "Are you injured?" Her forehead creases in concern.

"No," he manages, exhales, thankfully then forced to breathe in deeply again, catching her scent while their bodies are touching almost everywhere. "Just a bump on the head; I'm good, even peachy keen, as say."

"If that's so, let me assure you I won't disappear. No need to hold on this tight."

Her eyes dip down, and he follows her gaze down to where his hands are clawed into the rough cloth covering her body, at the shoulders, at her left side. "Right."

"You can, of course." Amy's smirk is -- something else. "I like it. As do you."

Their second kiss today is slower but, oddly, simmers even hotter. He could stop and take his hands off her body, he knows he could.

With an impatient huff, Amy pushes at the sack-cloth covering her, pulling it over her head, and then she's wearing nothing, all fair skin and constellations of freckles like celestial maps across her body.

"Come here," she whispers into his mouth, lips following along the line of his jaw, and her fingers are nimbly loosening the bow-tie. "This thing is as ugly as you aren't." She tosses it behind her.

"Amy --" he starts to speak, but there's something in the back of his throat, possibly an after-effect of the smoke and the mist.

"No worries, I've got it."

Her hands are clasping his again, tugging him down, down, down to the TARDIS floor right by the door.

Between kisses, she's got him out of his shirt, and his trousers are no match for her either. He isn't of much use; he's too busy marvelling at Amy Pond, here, with him, and his fingers follow the curve of her breast curiously before becoming too fascinated with the flush spreading down from her neck, at the soft-then-hard shape and texture of her nipples. He tests both with his tongue and her folds with his fingers, making her tremble agreeably, spread out over him like a sky-goddess in the lore of ancient civilisations on Earth and between the stars. She's touching him all over, pale fingers gripping him in perfect balance between _gentle_ and _tight_ , making him catch his breath in ways that have nothing to do with running and everything to do with her, Amelia Pond, who rises up above him and takes him inside, her heat dispelling the last vestiges of smoke in the corners of his mind, letting his body shudder and both of them move, together, until the universe shatters into perfect brightness.

As soon as he's able to again, he smiles at Amy, now curled around him on her side. She raises an eyebrow touches the tip of her nose to his ear, teeth grazing his earlobe. "Got you."

And yes, she has, for now.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [Shadowtights](http://shadowtights.livejournal.com) in the **[Doctor Who Secret Santa](http://dwsanta.livejournal.com)**.


End file.
